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A WHISTLESTOP TOUR OF THE WORLD
David Tennant on bringing Phileas Fogg back to life in the BBC’S epic new adaptation of Jules Verne’s classic Around The World In 80 Days
The wager is simple, the prize money enormous. In 1872, wealthy Englishman Phileas Fogg must travel around the globe in no more than 80 days to win £20,000 (over £2,000,000 in today’s money). If he fails, he must forfeit the same amount. For company, he has a young female journalist at loggerheads with her father and a valet on the run from the police. What could go wrong? Well, rather a lot...
Former Doctor Who David Tennant plays Fogg in BBC1’S new adaptation of Jules Verne’s classic 19th-century story Around The World In 80 Days – and Fogg becomes very much a man on a mission from the start. ‘He’s been stuck in the Reform Club in London for the past 20 years, reading his newspaper and eating his meals without any sense of adventure,’ explains David. ‘But then he’s prompted into action.’
First his butler Grayson (One Foot In The Grave’s Richard Wilson) delivers a postcard to his employer with his morning cup of tea. It has a picture of a large clockface on one side and the word ‘Coward’ on the other. For reasons that become clear as the eight-part series unfolds, the card stings Phileas.
Then his old friend and fellow Reform Club member Bellamy (Peter Sullivan) sees a newspaper article claiming that, thanks to improved technology and transport links, it is now possible to circumnavigate the globe in 80 days. When Phileas suggests it could be done and Bellamy challenges him to prove it, the bet is laid.
‘He’s a timid man taking a risk, rolling the dice’ DAVID TENNANT
‘It’s about a timid man taking a risk and rolling the dice,’ says David. ‘Bellamy initially wagers £10,000 and it’s Fogg, in a moment of confidence or madness, who decides to double it. It’s the bet that propels him out of the door and around the world.’
Fogg’s journey involves trains, boats, horses, camels and, famously, a hot air balloon. He’s joined by
Abigail ‘Fix’ Fortescue (German actress Leonie Benesch), the journalist who wrote the article, and his valet Passepartout (French actor Ibrahim Koma), a former waiter at the Reform Club who’s on the run after a fracas in the club’s kitchen. From France, where they narrowly avoid arrest, they travel through Italy and board a steamer for the
Suez Canal. Then it’s on to India and Hong Kong, before becoming stranded on a desert island. There’s a ship voyage to San Francisco and a trip across the US by train to New York City. If all goes to plan, they’ll take a steamer back to Liverpool, a train to London and a final dash to the Reform Club in Pall Mall.
The journey has a profound effect
on Fogg. ‘He goes from being someone ill-equipped to go on this kind of adventure to someone who discovers he has resources he didn’t realise he had,’ says David. ‘That helps him to revisit the loneliness and sadness from earlier in his life, and to try to put that to rest a little bit.’
The travellers cross eight countries over three continents, but the series was shot entirely in South Africa and Romania. The latter provided locations for 19th-century London, Paris, Liverpool and New York, while South Africa stood in for the hot middle section of the journey. ‘We were able to build sets there, such as the Arab port town of Al Hudaydah in Yemen, while its white sand dunes and mountains became our Arabian desert,’ says executive producer Simon Crawford Collins.
CGI played its part, too. Although a real hot air balloon was used in the opening episode when our three heroes are escaping a squad of gendarmes
in Paris, David and his co-stars had to pretend they were soaring across the Alps in one – 15,000ft in the air. But if that required a leap of imagination, some of the scenes involving animals didn’t. Worried the town square in Al Hudaydah wasn’t smelly enough for a place where animals were bought and sold at market, production designer Sebastian Krawinke added some dung. ‘I like to make my sets as authentic as possible, right down to the smells,’ he says. ‘Our square was a little bit too clean to start with but it came into its own once the dung had been added. It’s important to give the actors a genuine feeling of being where they’re supposed to be; I like to make them feel at home!’
Around The World In 80 Days starts on Boxing Day at 5.50pm on BBC1.